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When Chinese New Year comes (8th February 2016), China literally turns off. For two to three weeks, factories cease to work normal hours and production levels are often down to zero. This means that the weeks before the holidays, factories are often overloaded which can affect the quality of the goods being manufactured. Critically, it also influences the way in which Quality Control in China should be performed.

Overburdened Factories

While China stops shipping goods for almost a month, the rest of the world continues to consume. This results in orders multiplying before Chinese New Year holidays to compensate for the upcoming closures. Factories speed up production to cope with their increased workload and may need to work extra hours to hit deadlines. In these conditions, workmanship and product specifications are often neglected and internal Quality Control is no longer ensured: Chinese New Year Quality Risks are a reality which require buyers to adapt their strategy for quality control in China.

Choosing The Right Quality Control In China

The most popular inspection is the Pre-Shipment Inspection. However, in the busy run up to Chinese New Year, additional Quality Control in China may be necessary. The questions below may help you.

• Do we have time to rework the goods in case the pre-shipment inspection identifies defects and non-conformities?
  It is likely that in the case of defects and non-conformities that you will experience a delay. This is because vessels are very booked up over Chinese New Year and any delay in delivering goods to the warehouse (caused by re-working of defects, etc) will result in goods not being shipped on time.
• Are we sure the supplier will deliver on-time considering factories are overloaded during that period?
  Manufacturing delays are recurrent before CNY. Since Pre-Shipment inspections are carried out shortly before the goods leave the factory, they may not reveal production delays until it is too late.

The pre-shipment inspection is necessary but may not be enough during this busy period. The best way to avoid any delay is to adapt your quality control in China by executing a During Production Inspection. This allows tracking of the manufacturing speed and the goods’ conformity whilst the goods are still on the production lines. It also gives time to correct the mistakes along the way, therefore avoiding any need for postponement of the delivery date.

For sensitive orders or failed production inspection(s), the manufacturer should be closely reviewed in order to identify the issues, and followed up on in order to verify the corrective actions put in place are showing the required results. This is calledproduction monitoring and consists of having a quality inspector on the production line for one or more days, in order to review the production processes and work together with the factory to effectively put right anything going wrong.

Get to know more about AQF product inspection services to better secure your imports, and feel free to contact us for any questions.